How can you legally mail lipos? Mail person always ask about hazards and such and one of the things she ask is lithium batteries

To the best of my knowledge you can mail them but they have to go ground.

I'd check with your local post office as to their regulations as everywhere is different, in Australia lipos have to go via ground but through Australia post there is a cell limit you have to follow, with the packs that I send I use Fastway couriers as their a ground only service which makes it's easier to work out and there's no lipo declaration each time I send a pack.

Cheers Justin

USPS will ship them. Whatever you do, don't lie about your package. That could get you in big trouble.

Do you have too ship them ground with USPS?

there are so many regulations regarding the type, methods, and markings required for shipping lipos that it's easy to do something wrong. however, the size of the batteries that we typically ship fall short of being big enough to cause a headache with regulations. however, I would still highly recommend you talk with whoever you are shipping them (fedex, ups, etc) to ensure you are not violating any codes. from what I remember, something as simple as placing a piece of electrical tape to insulate the leads and prevent shorting the lipo is enough to make people happy with these small lipos. again, check with the courier. lipo's have brought down planes due to improper shipping methods. don't be the guy that brings down a plane.

Yes you can legally mail LiPo batteries in the U.S.

They do not have to go ground.

Applicable rules are in the U.S.P.S. Domestic Mailing Manual ("DMM") Section 601, Exhibit (meaning "table") 10.20.8. This can be found online.

I know this because I went through all this. My new postmaster insisted the LiPo batteries could not be mailed so I contacted the "Mailing Rules" department to clear this up.

To summarize the rules: No more than three "batteries" per package, no more than 20 WH per cell or 100 WH total per battery. That last part is why SMC says they will not offer a 7200mAHr 4S pack: it would exceed 100 WH for the whole battery.

I suggest bringing a printout of that table with you to the post office if you think you will have problems. Just make them do what they are supposed to do and mail your batteries.

Basic rule... Tell them what you are mailing and let them handle it

Except, unfortunately, you cannot rely on the postal clerks or sometimes even the local postmaster to know the details of all the rules.

I'm pretty sure they do have to go ground, at least with UPS and they must be clearly marked on the outside of the box.

I tried to find plane crashes linked to lipos, I only found 2 instances. One was a fire that happened on a plane in Dubai and was industrial type of batteries. The second on was a UPS plane, I couldn't find any definitive link between the crash and lipo's.

I would be interested in links to these plane crashes directly linked to Lipos starting the chain of events that cause a plane to go down, not the lipos being a secondary cause.

In any event, every time I've shipped lipos through usps, they ask if the batteries are packaged separate from the device. I've never seen usps put a sticker on the box, but I could see that being a good idea.


its only illegal to mail damaged lipo's, and greater than 1KW total energy(I think). From reading on the SMC page, SMC wont make batteries in the 4s higher than so many MAH because it would be illegal for him to ship them, or may have been he wont sell anything higher than 4s because your talking lots of stored energy.

At the end of the day who cares, ask the post office and see what they want you to do with them.

You do realise that planes are mostly aluminium and magnesium right? Ever seen a magnesium fire? Like a lipo, water doesn't work. Say for instance, a load of lipos goes up, starts an electrical fire inside the wiring harness in the plane, near the packages of lipos, who would know what came first, the wiring fire or the lipos?
Google is you're buddy
UPS Airlines Flight 6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6
On September 24, 2013, the GCAA released its comprehensive, 322-page report on the crash, which found “with reasonable certainty” that the fire which caused the crash originated in a cargo container which held thousands of lithium batteries

My earlier statment
I did google it. If you actually read my comment I mentioned that plane crash. Plus the plane crash in dubai that was related to industrial lipo's. Those are the only two crashes that related to lipo's being the main culprit. Just interested to see how many crashes can be linked to lipo fires. I see allot of people throw around that lipo's have caused plane crashes, and mailing lipo's is dangerous.

Not to down play the severity of a plane crash, but 2 out of thousands or hundreds of thousands of flights carrying lipo as cargo leads me to believe that lipo's being shipped by mail is safe.

USPS doesn't allow you to ship lipos because they often times put their packages on commuter flights.